In order to evaluate the availability of the lateral horizontal laryngectomy and anaplasty of epiglottis to treat some patients with specific supraglottic carcinomas and hypopharyngeal carcinomas, 17 cases of laryngeal and hypopharyngeal carcinomas were retrospectively analyzed, whose tumors were located at the lateral margin of epiglottis, aryepiglottic fold, medial wall of piriform fossa and were treated by the lateral horizontal laryngectomy and anaplasty of epiglottis. The results showed that all cases took food by mouth in postoperative 9–14 days and subjected to decannulation in postoperative 9–15 days. Three cases had postoperative hoarse voice. The free-disease survival rate of 3 years was 71.4% in 14 cases followed up after the first surgical therapy, and the overall free-disease survival rate of 3 years was 85.7% after the second surgical therapy. It was concluded that the manipulations of the lateral horizontal laryngectomy and epiglottiplasty were simple. It could alleviate the postoperative symptoms of aspiration and bucking remarkably and shorten their postoperative recovery time, yet does not lower the survival rate of patients if laryngocarcinoma or hypopharyngeal carcinoma cases were properly selected.

In order to investigate the roles of MTA2 in the pathogenesis of ovarian epithelial cancer, the expression of MTA2 in 4 ovarian cell lines were detected by semi-quantitative RT-PCR and Western-blot assays. MTA2 expression in normal, borderline, benign and malignant epithelial ovarian tissues was immunohistochemically examined. The expression of MTA2 mRNA and protein was detected in all of 4 cell lines of ovarian epithelial cancer. The expression of MTA2 mRNA and protein was higher in strong migration cell lines than in weak migration ones. In borderline and malignant ovarian tissues tested, MTA2 staining was dramatically stronger than in normal and benign tissues (P<0.01). The expression levels in malignant ovarian tissues were significantly higher than that in borderline epithelial ovarian tissues (P<0.01). The expression of MTA2 was correlated with clinical stage, histopathological grade and lymph node metastasis. It was concluded that the high expression of MTA2 was associated with more aggressive behaviors of epithelial ovarian cancer. MTA2 provides a novel indicator of ovarian cancer.

To study the role of the reversion-inducing-cysteine-rich protein with Kazal motifs (RECK) gene and matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2) in the regulation of trophoblast invasion of early pregnancy. Immunohistochemistry, Western blot and gelatin zymography were used to detect the RECK protein expression localization, expression level and MMP-2 activation level in the placental tissues harvested from 52 normal pregnant women (27 in the early pregnancy, 25 in the term pregnancy). Immunohistochemistry showed that RECK expression was found both in villous tissues of early pregnancy group and term pregnancy group and was mainly observed in cell membrane and cytoplasm of cytotrophoblasts and syneytiotrophoblasts. RECK expression increased with gestational time. RECK expression of early pregnancy group was significantly lower than that of term pregnancy group (P<0.05). RECK expression was significantly lower in cellular column (CC) with invasion ability. Western blot showed that the RECK protein expression in early pregnancy group was significantly lower than that in term pregnancy (P<0.05). The optical density values of RECK protein expression in early pregnancy group and term pregnancy group were 1.35±0.14 and 2.68±0.26, respectively, while MMP-2 activation ratio was contrary to RECK protein expression and decreased with the gestation time (P<0.01). The MMP-2 activation ratios of early pregnancy group and term pregnancy group were 0.46±0.05 and 0.10±0.02, respectively. The expression of the tumor inhibitory gene RECK was positively related with the invasion ability of trophoblasts, while the invasion gene MMP-2 was negatively related with the ability. The interaction between RECK and MMP-2 may play an important role in the regulation of the trophoblast invasion in early pregnancy.